Sony TA-E1000ESD

october 1989

1991+

A true landmark and one of Sony's biggest bestsellers.
Excellent DACs, a highly versatile EQ, a large and useful dot-matrix display, inputs aplenty and even a MIX function. We're used to all this nowadays, but this was 1989 !
And all through two ICs only : Sony CXD1335Q and Sony CXD1160.

Of course, every analog signal gets converted to digital so as to benefit from the numerous "sound fields" - digitalia still was fairly new, exciting, and Home Theater wasn't yet trying to replace traditional two-channel audio...

Many regretted the few features Sony deemed unnecessary to carry over to the TA-E2000ESD successor (most notably the simplified parametric EQ section), but if the the A/D and D/A sections of the final TA-E9000ES were obviously more refined, the TA-E1000ESD and TA-E2000ESD both sold in bigger quantities - the right balance between quality, features, retail price and... timing.

Sold in Japan under the same moniker (for once :) and made to be powered by the TA-N55ES... bestseller.